Hi All,
I could use the advice of the more experienced with this. My daughter has been receiving special ed services since she had to repeat first grade. She is now in 4th grade and is struggling. At the beginning of the year, we started private tutoring for her in addition to her special ed she gets twice a day a school. When we had her privately tested a our local University they said they could not find any specific learning disabilities although the noted some difficulties in focus. For more than a year we had her taking Adderal for ADD symptoms, but when she stopped growing, gaining weight, and became so moody and sometimes phsicall vilent with her younger brother, we decided to take her off the medications. She feels they did not help her very much and that she would rather be able to eat. She does still complain that the boys in her classroom are very noisy and often she has trouble hearing and focusing on what is being taught because of these kinds of distractions. Still, at the end of the first quarter, her regular classroom teacher was very pleased with her progress. She had noted improvements from the time we started the private tutoring, we were taking her twice weekly for hour long sessions. When our daughter was with the tutor, she was progressing and doing well, but when she tries to work independantly on her homework, she has trouble remember steps in math, retaining the information from before, and she has trouble reading through the difficult words in text quickly enough to comprehend what she has read. If I read the information to her, she can quickly answer the questions correctly. The Special Ed. Director for our district and the teachers feel that while she is progressing, she may still need to move to a self contained classroom in the next few weeks. The tutor told me today that she hates to see her get moved to such a restrictive environment when she has been progessing so well, but she understands that we have to do what is best for the child if that is what is decided. My husband and I want to best help our child, but we are uncertain if it is better to let her continue in the regular classroom being pulled out twice for special ed, or if we should give the go ahead to try out the self contained program to see if she would fair better working at her own pace. I am afraid of making the wrong decision here, and very much could use the input of others who might know from experience what we should do? I would rather continue as we are and up the private tutoring if nec. than move her to the self contained if that would be harmful to her. Please offer your advice, I need to figure this out before Thursday, Jan 13th IEP meeting.
Thanks,
Deb :)
Thanks Sue...
Having your insight as a self contained teacher is very helpful. We were in the process of arranging a visit when I posted this and it seems the more folks I talk to about it, the more I am advised against the idea. Even our daughter’s tutor, who is a Doctorate Level Educator, has told us that there is no way she would self contain her child, who was progressing in the current arrangement, (regular classroom w/ special ed twice daily, and the outside tutoring). Since she is working closely with our daughter twice weekly, and has more experience than us to gauge her progress, I take her opinion very seriously. She express yesterday, that our daughter, Lillie, IS progressing. She also volunteered that we could do tutoring all through the summer without so much homework load from school. She would be able to work on retaining the current skills and give her a head start on the fifth grade material. While staying in the current arrangement will mean a continued struggle for all of us, dd Lillie especially, it is my gut feeling that the continued struggle will be better for her in the long run than the potential of lower expectations being placed and expected from her. She cannot independantly learn, she hasn’t developed the self starter skills that we hope she will one day, so I am very fearful of the potential for that happening. While I know seeing the self contained classroom would be informative to some degree, I worry that we could not get a true picture of what our daughter’s experience there would be like. We would have to go and visit on several different occassions for longer periods than the school would probably like. I have nothing against the self contained teacher, but like you I fear that there will be more needy children getting her attention than she can get to. Our daughter tends to be quiet, reserved, shy, introverted around teachers, and adults. I picture her sitting there quietly being bored as the hours slowly tick by while she waits for the teacher to get to her. She says that already happens sometimes in regular classroom, but in the current class, she is able to get help from friends, and the special ed teacher is very helpful at covering the areas she has been confused about during the regular class time. She gets that extra support now, but would it be there in self contained? She is progressing now, and I can trust that. There is also the comfort issue. She has friends in this class for the first time in school ever and if we move her she is terrified they will forget about her. For the first time in her life, she feels like she fits in, she is accepted. I hate the idea of taking that away from her if we don’t really have to. She was treated so poorly by classmates in the past and has emotional scars from that. The last thing we want is to hurt her again if it isn’t absolutely necessary. I just think given more time and continued efforts, she will continue to progess where she is. Of course, we get the report card today, and after seeing some poor marks, I may be worried all over again. Still, thank you and everyone for this input. You cannot know how helpful it is to get advice from others who have experience with this. I was feeling so desperate about this, but now I feel I have alittle more knowledge and direction. Thanks so much for sharing.
Sincerely,
Deb
Re: Self Contained vs. Inclusion, advice please?
You go mom :-) :-)
I would be terribly reluctant to take her out of a working social situation. School personnel — including the regular ed. classroom teachers — often have an idealized picture of that self contained room where the student “can get the one on one help s/he needs.” They can so sincerely want what’s best — but they can be just plain wrong. It took me a year or two to realize that those “paranoid” parents who saw “such a stigma” with special ed…. were often right. And hey, there’s a lot of turnover in sped — most teachers haven’t been there long enough to know the ins and outs and to have seen what happens to students a few years down the road. So, the odds are that you’re right — and that’s not even counting the extra weight that mothers’ intuition deserves.
Self-contained will still be there next year.
Re: Self Contained vs. Inclusion, advice please?
(and that previous post was mine, having forgotten to long in)
Report Card brought great news!
:D I am extremely happy to report that not only did dear Lillie not have any poor marks on her report card, but she brought up not one but four of her grades from the last report card! She had all A’s, B’s, and one C in math which is her most painfully difficult class by far. Her Health score came up from a C to an A, so it should be clearly obvious that she is progressing and progressing greatly in my opinion! We are so proud of both her and her brothers hard work! We sent the good news to her Tutor yesterday and she was very pleased also. Now we can go into the IEP meeting today and feel very comfortable and just explaining our case to stay in the current arrangement! Still, the help everyone on this board has given me has been invaluable. I wouldn’t trade your advice for a two week vacation! Thanks again everyone! We’ll keep you posted!
In Sincere Thanks,
Deb
Inclusion
Inclusion is here to stay, that is until the pedullum swings the other way. Students with various abilities will be going to inclusion full time, according to the new IDEA. The reg. ed teachers keep asking me (A spec. ed teacher) what I can do to get the kids out of thier rooms. I admit to them, that there is nothing that I can do. I have students that I teach in a resource room this year, but at the end of this school year, I won’t be able to do that anymore. All I can say is that we must all work as a team, and if your child has two teachers in the classroom with them, rather they have been diagnosed with a disability or not, the child is receiving more attention than most. I have two students working in the general education classroom with accommodations and one with modifications for math. They like being around there peers and I have seen a change in the chldren wanting to achieve. I also work with a child with a 43 IQ, and she attends inclusio for social purposes only. I don’t know what to do about her next year, she needs the pull our for basic living skills, but I can’t pull her.
ANy suggestions would help!
Re: Self Contained vs. Inclusion, advice please?
Hi,
I agree with what you have said here, and wish I could offer you some advice that might help. Everyone on this board has been so helpful to me, but I fear I am far from versed enough to speak about what might help in this situation. My daughter has an average IQ so her situation would be much different than this childs. Maybe someone else here will be able to help and I apologize for not being able to do so.
Keep us posted and God Bless!
Deb
What will she be learning in the self-contained classroom?
It could be a choice of which classroom for her not to learn in — that she learns in the tutoring sessions. (Could also be that it’s the both of them that gets her the progress she makes.) If that’s the case, then the regular classroom is probably better — there are just fewer negatives. I’ve taught self-contained in middle and high school and it’s tough to meet the needs of the “almost okay in the regular class” sutdent if the other students are a lot further behind, and unfortunately many teachers end up not really trying to — not because they mean it that way, but because the other students simply demand more, constantly, and you put out the bigger fires. The student who already has okay skills & knowledge sometimes makes very, very little progress — or is basically expected to learn independently while the teacher works with the students who don’t have the skills for that. On the other hand, if the setting is a small enough group, or the teacher has the skills & resources so that she can really get lessons that fit her needs, then DO IT. Or, if really its through the enrichment of the tutoring that’s enabled her to barely make it — but as the years have passed, the difference has just gotten wider — then it could be that what theyr’e teaching there really does meet her needs better. You didn’t say what the testers felt was behind her struggling.
Have you dropped into that classroom for a visit? Frankly, I wouldn’t put my kiddo in a class I hadn’t seen in action.